Come Down Off That Tree

“Zacchaeus, come down quickly,
for today I must stay at your house.” 

And he came down quickly and received him with joy.

These are beautiful words from our Gospel today, Jesus commanding Zacchaeus to come down quickly and that he was received in joy.

Zacchaeus, like all of us had a past and maybe some of it was not that bright or filled with virtue.  As a rich man he may have cut corners when it came to his responsibility to the poor, to family, and friends, to society.  Being a man of means and maybe even prestige, he may have used the loopholes of his own day to fudge on his tax returns J or some other type of scheming.

Yet, he was a man much like us in and that he had a great interest in Jesus and because of his height wanted to get a good look at him and climbed a tree so that he could see.  We do the same in our lives, we want to meet Jesus and have Him receive us in joy so we may not climb a literal tree but we may do this or the other thing to get his attention, i.e. a good deed or make a promise.

That beautiful encounter moved Zacchaeus’ heart, not only to conversion but to start living out the commands of Jesus, i.e. love your neighbor.  He does this by generously giving away half of what he had and paying those he wronged four times over.  Grace was moving in him!  Don’t we all want that same grace, a grace that moves us to joy and to love?  We can have it my brothers and sisters, yes its simple, just come down from off the tree, and meet your Savior, the one who wishes to dine with you tonight and in our case in the next 30 minutes or so when we celebrate the Eucharist, let your hearts be filled with joy, the same joy Zacchaeus experienced!

I Have Kept the Faith

I am already being poured out like a libation,
and the time of my departure is at hand.
I have competed well; I have finished the race;
I have kept the faith.

       These words of St. Paul are haunting as they describe both his present predicament, being under house arrest in Rome, but also his near future, as he can see the end of his life.

       Yet, St. Paul realizes the most important thing, and that is his eternal salvation.  He is looking back on his life of faith and can say with good moral confidence that he has competed well and has kept the faith.  This notion of competing and keeping the faith are signal words for perseverance and if there is one virtue that describes the life of faith the best it would be perseverance.

Looking at St. Paul’s life you better believe he had perseverance, unshakable at that.  After his conversion he waited patiently for the Church to recognize his sincerity, I would imagine in some cases it took his entire life.  St. Paul traveled from place to place which was all done on foot, through some dangerous territory which was filled with brigands, criminals, and marauders.  The towns and cities he entered were not always receptive, as in many places he was arrested, punished either by whippings, being stoned, punched, slapped and spit on.  He also had to win over his Jewish brothers and sisters many of who turned their backs on him.  Finally he was arrested and brought to Rome and it’s amazing he did not die on the way as he was bit by a deadly scorpion and also shipwrecked.

St. Paul was a man of great perseverance as through it all he always kept the faith, he competed well!  St. Paul went on to receive his crown of glory for his work in the faith.  A question for us is: How much of a model is St. Paul to us?  Do we look to this wonderful saint in our own moments of struggle, especially when the last thing on earth that we want is to carry the cross one more step!  And yet, St. Paul did and he urges us to do the same, his entire two letters to St. Timothy are precisely about that, follow my example.

Being holy and getting to heaven is not easy work, it requires belief, but belief is easy, belief in my mind that is, the hard part is living out that belief each and every day, and not just in the days that we are smiling but even in the days in which we are crying or even at wits end.  St. Paul continues to cry out to us, the great preacher that he was, and says, “Hold on, continue to get up, fight the good fight, become a libation onto the Lord and keep the faith!  Amen!

I took that picture at the Vatican in Aug. of 2005

God Listens and He Answers

Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones
who call out to him day and night?
Will he be slow to answer them?
I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.
But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

I love the way this week’s Gospel from Luke ends, it gives us great hope and assurance that God listens to us and even answers us when we pray. Jesus even goes as far as telling us to be as this persistent widow, a woman who was not only persistent according to the story but even had become a nuisance to the judge who was at the point of exhaustion with her therefore granting her what she wished.

We believe as Catholics that God does hear all our prayers and even answers them; however, sometimes the answer is different than the one we had in mind, expected or even asked for.

This past March 19^th, on the feast of St. Joseph my mother suffered a heart attack and two strokes.  Her life remained in the balance.  When I asked the doctor to give me the truth about her condition and possible improvement, he said, “Fr. John, she’s very sick, pray and storm heaven with your prayers.”  Me and my brothers did that and after some weeks and months she began recovering real well and then on July 19^th, just four months later after a bleeding episode she was rushed to the hospital and after a number of tests they discovered colon cancer.  She underwent surgery which was successful and the cancer was only stage two (a) so it was completely contained and there is no need for further treatment besides routine checkups.  Her oncologist told me that if she had not been on blood thinners she would not have had that kind of bleeding episode and the tumor would have likely continued to grow, in a way God saved her through the heart attack.  The oncologist looked at me and send, and surely through your prayers.

Now that these moments are in the past I sit back and reflect on them.  My first thought is, “why did God answer our prayers just the way we wanted, i.e. that my mom would get better and she is?  I think of that in contrast to my father who passed away on the operating table when going for by-pass surgery.  We prayed just as much, our prayers were sincere, we were very much like the persistent widow and yet the outcome was much different.

I can say this, that God heard both the prayers for my dad and for my mom.  He also answered both prayers in His Divine Wisdom and Providence.  Others would just write it off as chance, i.e. one live another dies, the cycle of life, yes to some extent but with God’s hand in nature, always!

However, the question remains, why different outcomes, does not Jesus say, “I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.”  And in another place, “Ask and it will be given to you.”  The best way for me to explain this is not so much from the biblical text but personally once again.

When I took my father to the hospital that morning of November 28^th 2011 I knew that he would not make it, the Spirit of the Lord was speaking to my heart and preparing me.  It was not my distrust of doctors or their competence, I just knew he could not handle it, the feeling you get deep down in your gut where you already know the outcome.  I wanted so bad to turn around and tell him not to go through with it.  But I did not and for a time regretted it as he died some hours later.  When I shared these feelings with my a priest friend he told me, “Thank God you did not turn around.”  He went on to say, what if you had returned home and did not go through with the surgery and your father dies two weeks later on the kitchen floor, or in his sleep or walking outside, would the family have blamed you for not allowing him to have the surgery, how much would you have blamed yourself?  Finally he said, “What if God simply wanted him, are you ok with that, are you ok with God’s will?”  He did not say this to bring me down but to remind me, how much do I trust God and in his promises?

When God took my dad it was for the good as I look back on it now.  He had grown tired, his heart was bad since he was a child, and he prepared himself well to meet the Lord, my wanting him here was based on earthly wants, what I wanted for me, his presence, which was not a bad desire, actually a good one, but faith tells me it is a better desire to be with the Lord. 

Yet I still love the scene from a Man For All Seasons in which Meg, St. Thomas More’s daughter pleads with him to sign King Henry’s divorce decree and he refuses.  She says to him, then you desire to be a martyr.  He responded, “God asks us to pray for the best outcome and to do so always until He answers otherwise, so believe me Meg I will pray and do all I can to avoid this trouble, but if the doors continue to close in front of me and God shows me martyrdom then I will pray that I have the spittle for it. (Paraphrased)

So should you and I, pray always for the best outcome no matter what until God begins to show us otherwise.  My dad prayed that he would live but in the last few weeks when he was getting worse he too could feel it, that he would not make it and his prayers shifted to accepting any death that the Lord would give him and that he would embrace it.  That morning in the hospital he too knew in his gut because I could see it when he looked at me, it was not a look that everything would be fine as we judge fine, but that he was leaving.  Looking back this was not a bad thing, but a good thing and God did answer our prayers, He took my dad home where we all belong, in heaven.  Yet, my time with my father was not over, for even in death we spoke and that is for another time.

So, yes I bombard heaven like the persistent widow and I do so expecting the best outcome until God tells me differently.  Do I always trust implicitly, no, but I do always return to prayer because it is there that God answers me and I hope that you always do the same as well.